Video: Wall Street Journal reviews the Nokia Booklet 3G: 8 hours of battery with harsh use

The Wall Street Journal takes a stab at reviewing the Nokia Booklet 3G, the first laptop to come from the Finnish handset maker hellbent on becoming an “internet company”. Katherine Boehret loves the battery life, saying “after running it through a harsh test with its screen cranked up to the brightest setting, Wi-Fi on, music playing on a continuous loop and all power-saving features turned off, it ran for almost eight hours straight”. That’s where the praise end however, she urges readers to “beware its tiny keyboard”. Whatever happened to the 12 hours Nokia promised at Nokia World?

You’ll be able to pick up the Booklet 3G for $300 from AT&T with a 2 year contract, $60/month, that gives you 5 GB of data per month, or you can buy it without contract for $600. Note: The Booklet 3G comes with Windows 7 Starter Edition, which has a whole lot of limitations. Are you doing to pick up this HDMI port packing, underpowered Apple MacBook Pro clone? I’m curious, leave a reply below.

[Hat tip to @samin, Creative Director at Nordkapp]

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

Raghu

Hi Stefan, i have been reading your articles from quite a long time. The one thing i have observed is that you seem to be very bitter about Nokia products. I would say that your personal feelings are clouding your judgement.

Everyone knows that the advertised battery life for all devices are based on ideal conditions and not on harsh usage. Macbook Pro’s rated battery is 8 hrs of use time. If you subject it to heavy usage, it runs out in 4 hrs.

I was hoping that as a writer, you should keep such things in mind.
Jody

Bah, I think 8 hours with everything on max is pretty good. Seems like 12 hours might be achievable with more moderate usage.

Not that I would get one at the moment because of the restrictions. But you can blame Intel and MS for that. 1GB of ram is a limit of using the current Atom. Although I think those rules will be relaxed sometime soon, so the next version might be much better.
Stefan Constantinescu

The thing Nokia doesn’t get is that if they say 8 hours, and get 10 hours in a review, then they’ll be praised to high heaven.

If they say 12, and everyone gets 10, hell even 11, then people are upset.

You and I know very well that we’ll never get 12 hours, but the majority of people don’t.

If you want to read people kiss Nokia’s ass all day, then I recommend checking out another blog, or just subscribing to Nokia’s press site, either via email or RSS: http://www.nokia.com/press
Herny

I agree with Raghu, we have to be fair with nokia. 12 hours battery life is can only be true with moderate use. If the booklet can achieve that, that’s VERY impressive indeed. Name me any product that can achieve that, Stefan.

Stefan, there are many people kissing Apple’s ass all day too, FYI!
Stefan Constantinescu

I treat everyone equally: critically, with heavy doses of cynicism, and absolutely no interest in listening to people’s plea for me to “chill out” or “calm down” or “be nicer”.

This isn’t a date, this is a blog.
Mace

“Whatever happened to the 12 hours Nokia (NYSE: NOK) promised at Nokia World?”

A very strange comment, indeed. One would expect that the author knows that battery life depends on how laptop is used. Nokia figure is probably based on some industry standard based on typical average usage pattern. It makes no sense at all to compare this with the experience one individual person is having with harsh use. Furthermore, the batteries tend to last less time in the beginning and will only reach their full performance after several charging cycles.
Gabor

Why are these people let to write articles? This guy is biased and technically incompetent. He should start cleaning the toilets with his articles.
Stefan Constantinescu

“why are these people let to write” indeed

http://www.hookedonphonics.com/
Mike

I totally agree Raghu…

Stefan, although I see your point about what they advertise should be exceeded, or at least met under the harshest conditions, the truth is not all companies are held to the same standards. You bring up kissing Nokia’s butt, but when was the last time anyone tried to get 8 hours on a MacBook while blasting every non-power saving function and then wrote a negatively slanted review about it when it didn’t achieve the results?

Your point is valid in that they should advertise the absolute minimum you get, and anything above is pure extra, but I don’t think people are debating that, they are debating that everyone be held to the same standards.

Now that said, the mere fact you get 7 hours while blasting every function is incredible, and no other factory laptop or netbook achieves that with everything turned on. So does Nokia recieve no credit for this achievement just because they told you what the maximum power to expect under conservative conditions were? I don’t really care if Michael Jordan said before a game that he will score 50 points and win the championship, and then he only ends up scoring 39 and wins…he still won.